[Pkg-kbd-devel] Re: Ubuntu keyboard/installer plans

[Anton Zinoviev]

On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 10:56:05AM +0200, Denis Barbier wrote:
>
> I did not understand your points above, what is the problem with
> macintosh_vndr/* layouts?

The problem is the same with all non-pc layouts.  The current
rules/xorg and rules/xorg.xml files require that same layouts are
available regardless of the keyboard model.  However the mac layouts
do not support all variants that the main layouts support.  For
example there is gb(dvorak) but there is no macintosh_vndr/gb(dvorak).
As a result the configuration programs (including console-setup) will
try to use macintosh_vndr/gb(dvorak) and fail.

One good solution in my opinion is to make the macintosh layouts
variants of the main variants.  In that way one can set mac layout on
pc keyboard and vice versa - to use pc layout on mac keyboard.  For
example gb(macintosh) can be used instead of macintosh_vndr/gb(basic).

> On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 01:26:47PM +0300, Anton Zinoviev wrote:
> [...]
> > Also, many of the non-pc keyboards are not working.  I had these fixed
> > around the first version of console-setup and the X upstream accepted
> > the changes but unfortunately now the keyboards are again broken. :-)
> > Moreover I am not sure what is the proper fix of the problem.

The fix I made was the following.  I changed the rules file in such a
way that with mac keyboard model the mac layout is used (when such
layout exists) and otherwise use the usual pc layout.  In order to
implement this the rules file had to know which of the layouts had mac
alternatives.  At that moment this was easy because all mac layouts
had at most two variants - basic and nodeadkeys.  Currently there are
more mac layouts and it is not easy for the rules file to map these to
the usual pc layouts (and vice versa).

Anton Zinoviev